Media & Public Relations

Nobel Prize winner to speak at Binghamton University

2004-02-25

Richard J. Roberts, a 1993 Nobel Prize winner in Physiology or Medicine, will speak at 3 p.m. Thursday, February 26, in the Anderson Center Chamber Hall on the Binghamton University campus. Roberts’ visit is in collaboration with the opening of the Dr. G. Clifford and Florence B. Decker Life Science Learning Center at Roberson Museum and Science Center. The community is invited to attend.

Currently a joint research director at New England Biolabs, Roberts was born in Derby England and received his PhD from the University of Sheffield in England. He came to the United States in 1969 for a position at Harvard University.

In 1972, Roberts accepted a job at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory on Long Island, where research activities focus on cancer, neurobiology, plant genetics, genomics and bioinformatics. In 1977, while working there, Roberts discovered that, in most cells, genes are split, or not arranged in continuous strands.

The Dr. G. Clifford and Florence B. Decker Life Science Learning Center, located at Roberson Museum and Science Center, is a DNA laboratory and learning center that will serve the community as a world-class destination for education, research, recreation and tourism. Roberson is one of only five such laboratories in the world to provide students and the general public alike an introduction to the science of genetics, biotechnology and DNA. The Life Science Learning Center includes a laboratory classroom, a computer lab and an exhibit area.